Shuttle AN51R

The Shuttle AN51R is an interesting board that contains a few small, but clever innovations.

In addition to the pin headers for the power and reset switches, there are small switches mounted on the board itself for power and reset. This is an extremely useful feature when testing a board and will be appreciated by any enthusiast who regularly fiddles with their computers guts. Even better, is the inclusion of a CMOS reset button on the IO panel. The switch is recessed, so there is no chance of pressing it accidentally but a prod with the end of a biro is all it takes to reset the CMOS without having to open the case up. This is such a simple and obvious idea that it makes you wonder why it has taken so long for someone to do it.

The board is based on the nForce 3 250 chipset and includes Gigabit ethernet, 6 channel sound, firewire and an additional controller supplying two more SATA channels. The extra controller does not support RAID but the channels supplied by the chipset do.

The AN51R is well laid out, with the exception of the 4 pin ATX connector which forces the cable to cross the CPU fan. All the sundry pin headers are neatly lined up along the bottom edge of the board, so they do not interfere with the PCI slots. There is plenty of room between the AGP slot and the DIMM slot latches and the 20 pin ATX connector is well out of the way, in the top right hand corner.

The manual is informative, and walks you though the process of installation in a logical order then goes on to explain the BIOS settings. There is a separate booklet to explain the RAID functions which is very well written. BIOS overclocking options are plentiful, and it even has CPU multiplier settings for those who are lucky enough to have an unlocked chip.

The Shuttle AN51R is a lovely board, but it has one big snag. At approximately £120, this is by far the most expensive board in the roundup. It is very hard to justify spending an extra £35. It is also currently very difficult to get hold of.

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